Subtle Words of Deceit

Isaiah had been faithful to preach the prophetic words the Word of the LORD had given him to proclaim against Assyria and against Hezekiah’s plan to trust in Egypt to deliver Jerusalem. The Word of the LORD had been firm - trust in the LORD, for He alone can deliver Jerusalem from all its enemies. And if Hezekiah would trust in the LORD, then surely deliverance would come. 

In 713 BC, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, came into the Levant to deal with several client kingdoms that had rebelled against Assyrian rule. Instead of paying their taxes and tribute to Assyria, then had gone to Egypt to seek assistance to break away from Assyria. Ashkelon was defeated, then Sennacherib besieged Lachish and destroyed it. All the fortified cities of Judah were conquered one by one, until the only remaining holdout was Jerusalem. So Sennacherib sent Rabshekah to bring the message to King Hezekiah, who was shut up in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage. 

Rabshekah stood at the conduit by the upper pool on the highway to the fuller’s field, the same place Isaiah and his oldest son Shear Jashub had come to speak with King Ahaz many years earlier. Eliakim, who was over the household, and Shebna the scribe, and Joah the recorder went out to speak to him. Rabshekah spoke to them in Judean, telling them how the king of Assyria was coming and would take their city. He knew of their plan to get help from Egypt, but had cut of the ability of Egypt to help them. He warned them to not trust in the LORD, but he made the mistake of confusing the LORD with all of the other gods of the nations. Hezekiah had removed the high places to Baal and Ashtaroth and all the other false gods. 

‘If you say, we trust in the LORD our God, is it not He whose high places and whose altars Hezekiah had taken away, and has said to Judah and Jerusalem, ‘You shall worship before this altar?’ Now therefore, come make a bargain with my master the King of Assyria, and I will give you two thousand horses, if you are able on your part to set riders on them. How then can you repulse one official of the least of my master’s servants, and rely on Egypt for chariots and for horsemen? And have I now come up without the LORD’s approval against this land to destroy it? The LORD said to me, ‘Go up against this land, and destroy it.’’

The message was not unexpected, for they told Rabshekah to speak in Aramaic, since they understood that. But he spoke even louder, directing these warnings against everyone on the wall so they could all hear clearly that Assyria was about to besiege their city. He warned that all of them would be doomed to drink their own urine and eat their own dung, for the seige would be brutal.

So he spoke these words, ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you. Nor let Hezekiah make you trust in the LORD, saying, ‘The LORD will surely deliver us, this city shall not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’ He offered that they all come out and surrender to Assyria, then they would have peace until the king came and took them away into exile. They would be removed into good lands where food would be plentiful. But these words were subtle deception. The Word of the LORD had already spoken to not make a covenant with death, to not trust in kings, but to only trust the LORD, for He alone could deliver.

Rabshekah finished his warnings, ‘Beware lest Hezekiah misleads you, saying, ‘The LORD will deliver us.’ Has any one of the gods of the nations delivered his land from the hand of the king of Assyria? Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim? And when have they delivered Samaria from my hand? Who among the gods of these lands have delivered their land from my hand, that the LORD should deliver Jerusalem from my hand?’ 

And with those words, the defeat of Assyria was sealed. Rabshakeh did not know it, but by grouping the One True God in with the false gods of the nations, he has doomed his nation to destruction. God had already proclaimed destruction and judgment on them for their sins, and it would surely come. The envoy from Hezekiah turned around without saying a word and returned to Hezekiah with their clothes torn to tell him the words of Rabshekah.